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Netflix’s ‘You People’ wasn’t funny at all to my Black and Mexican Jewish family
(JTA) — As a couple that is two parts Jew, one part Black, and all parts lovers of comedy, my husband and I sat with hopes (maybe not high ones) to watch Netflix’s “You People.”
It’s not often that we see our cultures represented together in buzzy movies, especially not ones set in Los Angeles, the city we love so much, and with the comedy king Eddie Murphy in the cast, and we were excited about the possibility of seeing ourselves reflected in the story of blended Black and Jewish families.
Unfortunately, at the expense of comedy greats including Murphy, Jonah Hill, Deon Cole, Elliot Gould and Julia Louis Dreyfus (with cameos by so many others!), the movie ended up being a painful reminder of how our family — made up of Mexican and Black Jews with Ashkenazi roots — so often must explain and justify our existence in Jewish and Black spaces.
The movie starts off with Jonah Hill’s character very comfortably recording his podcast about “the culture” (ostensibly, hip-hop culture?) with his Black, queer best friend, seeming to set the stage for the progressive coolness that will later allow him to date someone who is not “square” and potentially Black. Hill’s character loves rap music, sneaker culture and Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, and he knows not to say the full title of that song from Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Watch The Throne” album.
Yet we find him in scenarios that time and again have him playing into uncomfortable tropes — like saying “our boy” when referring to Malcolm X — as he quickly and nervously falls into defining Black culture at its most reductionist form. It’s no surprise then, that the film goes on to portray Blackness as a monolithic, one-dimensional stereotype.
It doesn’t get any better when we see Hill’s character in a Jewish space: High Holiday services at the Skirball Cultural Center, here serving as a synagogue. There and throughout the movie, Jews are portrayed as white and uncool — sometimes aggressively so, almost as if the writers didn’t trust the audience to know this family is Jewish if not for the mom complaining about tattoos and trying to set up her son with a highly educated daughter of a friend.
My husband and I have been to the Skirball Center on many occasions, one of them being a wedding for two supremely cool Jews of color. But you would never know from the movie that such an event could ever take place, or even that Jews of color exist in Los Angeles — even though, ironically, the actor playing Jonah Hill’s eventual love interest is Black and identifies as half-Jewish. Instead, in creating the world for “You People,” the writers continue a dated tradition of movies that overly simplify the worlds they depict based on racial binaries.
This flattened view of the world is especially lamentable because the rom-com genre has at its fingertips the easiest blueprint: All families are ridiculous and oftentimes the blending of two families even more so. Within my family alone, there are several different cultures that consistently push against each other in humorous ways. There’s “nerd culture,” “comic book culture,” “skate culture,” “food culture.” Even in my culturally blended family, where my Mexican immigrant parents regularly share meals with my Black mother-in-law, the resulting humor has never been about racial differences. In a story where the message is that we can all get along, we don’t need the punchline to be about race.
The Silversteins, from left: Joshua, Ami, Laila, Shel and Cinthya, outside of their Los Angeles home in 2021. (Casey Durkin/NBC)
“You People” could have told a story in which Jonah Hill’s character actually subverts the standard narrative, maybe one in which his character realizes how easy it is to fetishize Blackness and through experiences with his father-in-law comes to find the richness and fullness of Black culture that can even be expanded by his own Jewish background when blending his family with his fiancée’s. Or a movie in which a member of the Nation of Islam tries to openly accept a Jewish son-in-law and, rather than using Louis Farrakhan as an awkwardly divisive plot point, we see instead a Muslim Eddie Murphy try to find ways to connect with modern day hip-hop culture. Either option would allow the audience to see the layers in these characters that we are so often erased from narratives about Jewishness or Blackness.
Instead the writers opted for the easiest avenue: comedy based on persistent racial “othering.” But the differences shown are no longer based on any actual truth. They are based on beliefs we have been told to keep repeating in an effort to keep the agenda of white supremacy intact. The writers are depicting worn-out “differences” that don’t represent an authentic Jewish or authentic Black experience. Presenting any cultural experience as the “authentic” one is just another way of saying stereotypes are true — and that’s not funny at all.
Several years ago, my family participated in Ava Duvernay’s life-swap show in which we traded homes and experiences with a family of white Mormons. Our goal at the time was to show examples of coexistence and to demonstrate how contemporary identities are multilayered. But we also hoped that the experience would help us find greater acceptance as Jews of color, which still feels generally elusive. “You People” underscored for us why.
At one point during the life-swap, my husband said to me, “Listen, when you’re Black and Jewish, and everything hurts, laughter is the best medicine.” But laughter doesn’t come easily when the jokes only make sense if you don’t exist.
Sure, there were a few chuckles in my house during “You People.” The comedian Mike Epps was funny as he always is, and I laughed when Jonah Hill showed up to his date in a tie-dye sweatsuit, in a very L.A. move. But for nearly two hours, all I could think about was how “You People” feels like a movie for folks who are clinging to stereotypes because it helps them feel comfortable with their own cultural identities, which once were dominant but now must share real estate with others that are equally authentic. By confining the definition of culture to a singular idea of “race” this movie prevents an important conversation from moving forward. And that means my family, and so many other Jewish families, are once again left behind.
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Dublin to Rename Chaim Herzog Park in a Move Slammed as Attempt to Erase Jewish History
Anti-Israel demonstrators stand outside the Israeli embassy after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Molly Darlington
i24 News – Citing the Gaza war, Dublin city council voted to rename a park honoring Israel’s sixth president, the Irish-born Chaim Herzog, in further manifestation of anti-Israel sentiment in the country.
While a new name is yet to be chosen, reports cite efforts by pro-Palestinian activists to change it to the “Free Palestine Park.”
Former Irish justice minister Alan Shatter harshly criticized the vote, charging that “Dublin City Council has now gone full on Nazi & a committee of the Council has determined it should erase Jewish/Irish history. Herzog Park in Rathgar is named after Chaim Herzog, Israel’s 6th President, brought up in Dublin by his father, Yitzhak HaLevi Herzog, a friend of Eamon De Valera, who was Chief Rabbi of Ireland & Israel’s first Chief Rabbi… Some councillors want the Park renamed ‘Free Palestine Park.”
The Jewish Representative Council of Ireland issued a statement regarding the renaming of Herzog Park.
“It sends a hurtful and isolating message to a small minority community that has contributed to Ireland for centuries. We call on Dublin City Councillors to reject this motion. The removal of the Herzog name from this park would be widely understood as an attempt to erase our Irish Jewish history.”
A virtuoso diplomat and an intellectual giant, Herzog had served in a variety of roles throughout his storied career, including a memorable stint as the ambassador to the United Nations, where in 1975 he delivered a speech condemning the Soviet-engineered resolution to brand Zionism as a form of racism. The address is now regarded as a classic, along with the oration from the same session by the US Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar slammed the decision, saying that Ireland’s “antisemitic and anti-Israel obsession is sickening.”
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Qatar’s Al Thani to Visit Beirut Wednesday to Meet with Lebanon’s Leaders
Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani makes statements to the media with then-US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in Doha, Qatar, Oct. 13, 2023. Photo: Jacquelyn Martin/Pool via REUTERS
i24 News – Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed Al Thani will visit Beirut on Wednesday to meet with Lebanon’s leaders, Al-Jadeed reported Saturday.
The visit comes “as part of an effort inseparable from the efforts by Egypt in coordination with Arab countries, foremost among them Saudi Arabia.”
The trip coincides with a sensitive period for the country, ravaged by war and deep economic crisis.
Lebanon is under growing pressure from both Israel and the United States to more swiftly disarm Hezbollah and other Islamist groups across the country, with Israel increasingly inclined to stop the Shiite militia from rearming and rebuilding its infrastructure.
Hezbollah was left devastated in the aftermath of a nine-day war last year, that saw Israel take out its command structure and lay waste to a significant proportion of its missile arsenal.
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Pope Removes Shoes But Doesn’t Pray on Visit to Istanbul’s Blue Mosque
Pope Leo XIV visits the Sultanahmet Mosque, known as the Blue Mosque, during his first apostolic journey, in Istanbul, Turkey, November 29, 2025. REUTERS/Kemal Aslan
Pope Leo visited Istanbul’s Blue Mosque on Saturday, removing his shoes in a sign of respect but not appearing to pray in his first visit as leader of the Catholic Church to a Muslim place of worship during his four-day visit to Turkey.
The first US pope bowed slightly before entering the mosque and was led on a tour of the expansive complex, able to hold 10,000 worshipers, by its imam and the mufti of Istanbul.
Leo, walking in white socks, smiled during the 20-minute visit and joked with one of his guides, the mosque’s lead muezzin – the official who leads the daily calls to prayer.
The Vatican appeared surprised that Leo had not stopped to pray during the visit and that he had not been welcomed to the mosque by the head of Turkey’s state-run religious organization, known as the diyanet, as had been planned.
About three hours after the visit, the Vatican released a press statement saying both the prayer and the welcome had occurred, although they had not. The Vatican press office said the release had been sent in error.
LEO’S FIRST TRIP AS POPE BEING CLOSELY WATCHED
Askin Musa Tunca, the muezzin, told journalists after the mosque visit that he asked Leo during the tour if he wished to pray for a moment, but the pope said he preferred to just visit the mosque.
The Vatican said in a statement immediately after the visit that Leo undertook the tour “in a spirit of reflection and listening, with deep respect for the place and for the faith of those who gather there in prayer.”
While Leo did not appear to pray during the tour, he did joke with Tunca. As the group was leaving the building, the pope noticed he was being guided out a door that is usually an entryway, where a sign says: “No exit.”
“It says no exit,” Leo said, smiling. Tunca responded: “You don’t have to go out, you can stay here.”
The pope is visiting Turkey until Sunday on his first overseas trip as pontiff, which also includes a visit to Lebanon.
Leo, a relative unknown on the world stage before becoming pope in May, is being closely watched as he makes his first speeches overseas and interacts for the first time with people outside mainly Catholic Italy.
The Blue Mosque is officially named for Sultan Ahmed I, leader of the Ottoman Empire from 1603 to 1617, who oversaw its construction. It is decorated with thousands of blue ceramic tiles, the basis of its popular name.
NO VISIT TO HAGIA SOPHIA
The 17th-century structure is located across from the Hagia Sophia, a former Byzantine-era cathedral that Leo did not visit, in a break from past papal trips to Turkey. The Hagia Sophia, one of Christianity’s most important places of worship for about a millennium, was made a mosque for 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
It was converted to a museum by Turkey’s secular republic more than 70 years ago but turned back into a mosque by President Tayyip Erdogan in 2020.
The Vatican has not commented on Leo’s decision not to visit the Hagia Sophia. The late Pope Francis, who visited the structure during a 2014 trip to Turkey, said in 2020 that he was “very pained” that it had been made a mosque again.
Leo chose mainly Muslim Turkey as his first overseas destination to mark the 1,700th anniversary of a landmark early Church council there that produced the Nicene Creed, still used by most of the world’s Christians today.
At a ceremony on Friday to commemorate the Church council with Christian leaders from across the Middle East, the pope condemned violence in the name of religion and urged Christians to overcome centuries of heated divisions.
Speaking to senior clerics from countries including Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Israel, Leo called it a scandal that the world’s 2.6 billion Christians were not more united.
Leo repeated his condemnation of religious violence on Saturday at a Mass with Catholics at Istanbul’s Volkswagen Arena, attended by about 4,000 people.
He also met with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, who is based in Istanbul and is the spiritual leader of the world’s 260 million Orthodox Christians.
In a joint declaration, the two leaders lamented the number of bloody conflicts around the world and pleaded for civil and political leaders to pursue peace.